Visit the Genshin Impact Reddit, and you will undoubtedly find yourself immersed in the ongoing predicament surrounding the game’s English voice actor cast during the SAG-AFTRA video game voice actors’ strike. Across the latter half of 2024 and 2025 so far, many characters have gone voiceless as voice actors have undertaken strike action. While not a concern limited to HoYoverse alone, it is more apparent given the rapid-paced development of not only Genshin Impact but also their other games, including Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. In some cases, this has resulted in characters being completely recast, including Kinich, who recently had their VA changed from John Patneaude to Jacob Takanashi. Ultimately, it is a complex situation for all involved, and as someone who is not based in the United States, it is surprisingly challenging to wrap my head around.
In the latest news around the Genshin Impact voice cast, Corina Boettger, who has voiced the companion character Paimon from the opening moments of Version 1.0, joined YouTuber Paperbag Boy for an interview, and is outside of everything, a very insightful and well-balanced discussion about Boettger’s experience working on the game as, essentially, its mascot character / the Traveller’s “Emergency Food”.
But in the latter half of the interview, they shared that following the departure of John Patneaude (mistakenly quoted as Jacob in the article), they told HoYoverse that they would not be coming back until the game is union specifically – and also noted that it is not only about AI Protections but also issues with payment within the 30 days stipulated in their contract (which also follows an incident that occurred with them specifically a couple of years back). You can watch the full interview on YouTube for more information.
As of the most recent update of Genshin Impact, Paimon is fully voiced by Corina Boettger. How far back the recording history goes, whether something can be worked out, or whether we could see a new voice actor take the reigns of the character… time will tell. It would be a real shame however, with her being a major consistent across many players’ journeys across the now six nations of Teyvat.
